


Press Post

by notsafeforowls



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Childhood Trauma, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-10 17:01:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20855213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsafeforowls/pseuds/notsafeforowls
Summary: The thing about being brave is that it doesn’t fucking last.





	Press Post

**Author's Note:**

> For the childhood trauma square on my Bad Things Happen Bingo card.

The thing about being brave is that it doesn’t fucking last. Sure, Richie carves those letters in the bridge, reads Stan’s letter that tells him to be who he wants to be, to be proud, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.

For one thing, Richie’s typed up a stupid post that’s supposed to be his big coming out about ten times and deleted it every time.

And the problem is that just because it’s dead, doesn’t mean that it’s not still around in different ways. Like how Bev’s nightmares are about drowning in blood now, not everyone else dying. Or how Richie still wakes up in the middle of the night to check that Eddie’s still breathing because he still can’t forget what he saw in the deadlights.

Eddie’s a light sleeper. He bitches every single time, complaining about _disturbing my sleep cycle, asshole_ and _the importance of a good night’s sleep_ like Richie doesn’t remember those nights as teenagers, when they stayed up light, hiding out in the clubhouse with flashlights, and talking about shit that was so unimportant that Richie doesn’t even remember, even without it making him forget.

The problem is that Richie’s brain is always five steps ahead. He thinks about making a joke in one of shows – because Eddie shoves his arm and says, “You’re funnier when you’re not shitting out somebody else’s words” – and he’s already anticipating the reactions. The disgust. The whispers. The mocking about the _truth_ that sounds like _it_. He lets other people write his material. Eddie fucking heckles him. It’s a _thing_ now.

He thinks about pressing _post_ and Richie’s already thinking about the comments he’s going to get. And, hey, it’s not like he has the worst audience ever, but he’s known as Trashmouth and that says it all, really.

He thinks about the arcade and the boy he’s not even sure he liked, thinks about Henry Bowers and stupid clowns.

“Maybe I’ll just post a link to some gay porn, or maybe a whole playlist, maybe I’ll make one special, really give them something to get pissed off over” Richie suggests, but Eddie’s already grabbing his phone from his hands.

“You want to post this, right?” Eddie asks, scanning the post. “This is shit. This looks like a teenager wrote it.”

“Fuck off.” It _is_ shit. It’s Richie’s specialty: talking and talking and saying as little as possible. There’s a whole paragraph where he talks about how one of his old shows on YouTube was shit because he was trying to joke about relationships and he didn’t even date, let alone date women, and how the people who wrote the good jokes were probably writing them about their husbands or wives.

“You should get Bill to write it. He can do endings now.” Eddie’s typing now and Richie can see him deleting sections, editing others. He deletes a whole paragraph and mutters something about, “Nobody needs to know that, for fuck’s sake, why don’t you just tell them about the alien clown?”

When he’s finished, he holds the phone out to Richie again. The post is still there. Well. Sort of. Eddie’s kept the jokes about Richie never writing his own material, cut out some of the parts that Richie thinks sounded bad to begin with, cut out the more personal parts. What’s left is the true story. The essence of the entire situation.

Richie Tozier is gay. Richie Tozier has a hypochondriac boyfriend whose snoring wakes the neighbor’s cat.

Richie Tozier is going to start writing his own material. Richie Tozier is a shitty fucking liar.

It’s honest. _Truthful_. Richie swallows hard.

And the thing is, the fear is still there, but Richie thinks about how the stupid fucking clown is dead, and Henry fucking Bowers is dead, and how he doesn’t even remember the names of most of the guys who sneered _faggot_ at him, not even the name of the boy from the arcade.

“Fuck it,” Richie says because, really, that’s all he can really do, sitting in his not-that-great apartment, not even watching the movie that Eddie complained about and showed up with tonight, demanding that they watch it before he got _fucking spoiled again_.

Richie presses post and switches his phone off. People can say whatever the fuck they want.

His next show, he’s gonna talk about his boyfriend’s shitty taste in movies.


End file.
